After the crash and the burn and the
by booknerd11
Summary: Post-TLB: Susan was not the same after her second trip to Narnia. She envies her siblings, and remembering Narnia hurts too much.


**Disclaimer**: I do not own any part of the Chronicles of Narnia. _(Honestly. If I did, would I really be writing fanfiction?)_

* * *

**After the crash and the burn and the –**

Susan was not the same after her second trip to Narnia.

"Susan – come and sit with us" Peter would say. But Susan would not.

"Susan – come and walk with us" Edmund would say. But Susan would not.

"Susan – come and talk with us" Lucy would say. But Susan would not.

She envied them; she envied their ability to walk and talk and act as though their hearts were not screaming out in protest. She envied their ability to be content with a world where there were no Talking Animals, only dumb beasts. She envied their ability to be content with a world that had no fauns or centaurs or giants or nymphs. She envied that they could live with two worlds – living (physically) in England with their minds in Narnia – while she was only able to live in one world, completely and utterly, at a time.

"Susan – come and talk with me" her friends beckon. And Susan goes with them.

"Susan – come and dance with me" says a boy _(a boy who pales in comparison to the Knights and Princes and Kings who once fought for the slightest glance from a Gentle Queen.)_ And Susan dances.

"Susan – come and do your work" her teachers demand. And Susan complies.

_(She is weeping on the inside. No one notices.)_

* * *

She envies her siblings for their ability to stand tall when the world demands that they bend to its standards. She envies their strength, feeling all the weaker as she complies with the world's demands. She hides her face behind a mask of lip stains and face powders, and acts as though boys and parties and clothing are the most important parts of life. If she must live in England, she shall fit in as best she can – even if it means pretending Queen Susan the Gentle never existed.

Peter sneers at her mask.

"You were once beautiful without all that," he says.

_I know. _Susan whispers to herself. _But that was then, in Narnia, and things are different here._

Edmund looks on pityingly.

"Don't forget who you are, Su." he tells her.

_How could I forget?_ Susan says to herself. _I was (am) Queen Susan, the Gentle, sister of Peter and Edmund and Lucy, Daughter of Eve. _

Lucy despairs over her.

"Don't you remember Narnia, Su? Don't you remember the Beavers and Mr. Tumnus? Don't you remember Aslan, Su?" she cries.

_Of course I remember Aslan!_ Susan shouts to herself. _It was Aslan who forgot _**me**_._

Remembering Narnia hurts too much.

* * *

And Aslan is nowhere to be found – not here, not in this world. _(She tried so hard to find him – really, she did, but she lost the Gentle Queen along the way and –)_

And so, Susan forgets. Or at least, pretends to.

Susan was never truly able to lie to herself, in the end.

* * *

And when Peter called her one day, begging her to come to meet them at the train station, and tells her that it's for Narnia, Susan cannot take it – she cannot go back, nor can she bear the thought of the land that neither has a want or need of her any longer. She does not answer Peter's repeated attempts at getting a response from her.

"You remember Narnia, don't you, Su?" he asks at last.

"Of course I do Peter, it was just a game we played as children." she lies.

"Su!" he interjects "It was real! You know it was real! Don't you remember, Su?"

"It was a game, Peter! It wasn't real! And you'd be better off growing up and forgetting about such silly childhood games." she cries, slamming the phone into the receiver.

And she goes and fixes her makeup, hoping the scars from her broken heart won't show.

* * *

And when the call comes at six in the afternoon, Susan is numb. She feels nothing as she goes down to the station, and identifies the bodies of each and every family member she has – Mother, Father, Peter, Edmund, Lucy, even _Eustace_ was there, with his friend, Jill, and Professor Kirke, and Miss Polly Plummer, the woman he told them about after they – _no._

It is not until later, as she stands alone at the graves of her siblings, that she even allows herself to cry.

_Why have you left me all alone?_

* * *

And she envies them their death, too. She arranges for their funeral and knows that it is nowhere near what it would have been back in –. She stands over the three graves that held her siblings and envies them. She envies that they are now with Aslan and Mr. Tumnus and the Beavers and Corin and Cor and Aravis and Caspian and Reepicheep all their Narnian friends. She envies them because, in the end, she knows Aslan would never have forgotten _them_. She envies that they have (most likely) been invited into Aslan's Country with open arms. She envies them because she fears that one day, she will not be welcomed there; that she will have been forgotten.  
She plants an apple tree next to their graves.

* * *

At night, she dreams of castles and dances and the swish of long skirts and the soft patter of slippered feet upon stone and the smell of Narnia in springtime, and wakes up with tears on her face, the hint of melody of a lullaby a Gentle Queen once sung to a Prince of Archenland in her ear. She wakes up and there is the memory of a whisper of a Lion's voice, urging her to find him, _for the way to my Country lies through your world, not Narnia_…

Troubled by dreams and half-mad from grief, she tries searching for Aslan, for some hint of Narnia, of her siblings, in England, hoping that if she does, the dreams that ruin her sleep will stop.

She finds her younger sister, Lucy, in the beauty of England's countryside.

She finds her younger brother, Edmund, in the words of books.

She finds her elder brother, Peter, in the eyes of a boy taking care of a younger sibling.

She finds a home in the smile of a man who surpasses all the men she could have had, a man who surpasses all the lords and princes and kings who vied for her hand, a man who loves her for _her_, beauty or not, a man who knows what it is like to lose a home.

She finds a home in a man who, like herself, has once lost everything and is now clinging to the wreckage of a life once lived.

And in finding Lucy and Edmund and Peter and a home, she finally _(finally!)_ finds Queen Susan the Gentle.

* * *

It is the fifth anniversary of their death, and Susan finds herself at the house the Professor once lived in, bequeathed to her upon his death, with her husband.

He asks Susan to look around the house with him, and together they walk and walk and walk, opening doors and looking through the contents of each room.

Finally, they come across a room very nearly empty, save for a large, ornate wooden wardrobe. Susan, in a trance, walks over to the wardrobe and goes inside, feeling for the back. Her husband, confused, follows her.

The clock chimes six and Susan is undone and all of a sudden she is telling her husband of a Witch and a Lion and a Wardrobe and how it lead into a land called Narnia and High King Peter the Magnificent and King Edmund the Just and Queen Lucy the Valiant and Queen Susan the Gentle.  
She talks of Beavers and Fauns and trees that came alive and danced. She talks of gentle Giants and Princes who are turned to donkeys. She talks of lost-enchanted-princes who saved their land from enchantresses and countries where slavery is common and people talk like poetry.  
She talks of how the four Monarchs of Narnia left after fifteen years and of finding herself twelve after being twenty-seven. She talks of returning to help a boy-king claim a throne that was once hers and Peter's and Edmund's and Lucy's and of having to leave Narnia forever.

She talks of growing up (again) and feeling forgotten and confused and betrayed and homesick.

She talks of trying to forget the land that she thought forgot her, of lipsticks and nylons and invitations, of dancing with boys who could not compare to all the Knights and Princes and Kings who fought for the slightest bit of favor from a Gentle Queen, of how none of those boys and men could ever see past the shine of a beautiful face.  
She talks of her envy of her siblings, of her envy for their strength and purpose and even her envy of their deaths.  
She talks of the apple tree she planted at their grave and how she hopes they have found their way back to Him.  
She talks of searching and searching for Aslan and losing herself and not knowing where to find him here in England, of hope for forgiveness, for how could she have cast Narnia and Peter and Edmund and Lucy aside as she did?

And when she is done, her husband is silent and she asks him if he believes her.

And it is when he tells her that he does that she knows that Aslan has not abandoned her, that He has not forgotten her, and that perhaps, she has found Aslan in England, for she knows that this man right in front of her was surely sent by Aslan himself.

* * *

Susan has approached her twenty-seventh birthday for the second time. She sighs in relief, for it is the last birthday she is celebrating a second time, and perhaps next year she will be able to welcome the coming of another year without the memories of a land long gone coloring her view of the celebrations.  
She knows that her party is meager in comparison to the lavish affair she had back in Narnia for the coming of her twenty-seventh year, yet, when she sees the small cake that her husband lovingly baked for her, she cannot but help to think that perhaps, _this_ twenty-seventh birthday was even better than the last one (_how queer that sounds_).

That night, she dreams of castles and lions and wakes up with a smile on her face and the vague memory of the laughter of kings and queens and the knowledge that even in England, Aslan is everywhere and that she cannot (will not) see him _here_, since for all that he is good, he is not a tame Lion and will not come when she calls Him.

* * *

Susan is thirty-one, covered in sweat, and there is a screaming, red-faced, absolutely perfect baby in her arms. She could not be happier.

As she looks into the face of her newborn child, she knows that _this_ is why she left Narnia, why Aslan sent her back – how else could this perfect little girl have been born otherwise?

"We could name her Lucy, if you'd like" her husband offers.

And Susan kisses him thoroughly, declaring she'd rather name their daughter Helen _(after all, it was the name of the first Queen of Narnia, and Queen Helen was a good woman indeed)_.

Somewhere, not very far away, she swears she can hear the soft purr of a Cat.

* * *

Susan is fifty-four, and her eldest daughter is getting married (_his name is Frank, and Susan laughed when Helen introduced him to the family)_. Her first son is the groom's best friend, and he, along with her youngest, have sworn to inflict great harm upon the groom should he dare trifle with their sister. Her second daughter and third child is the precocious eighteen-year-old maid-of-honor, and proud of it, protecting the bride from any and all possible disasters.

* * *

As Susan stands with her husband, she is glad she did not stay in Narnia, that Aslan was right to send her back – after all, had she not been sent back, her daughter would not have been born and how else could these two souls have found each other otherwise?  
(_She swears that, out of the corner of her eye, she can see a great Cat smiling down on her and the beginnings of a path toward Aslan's Country_.)

* * *

Susan is sixty-nine as she stands in the cemetery, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, watching her husband lowered into the cold, hard ground. When the grave has been covered, she takes her grandchildren to meet her siblings. Susan sits in the shade of the apple tree she had planted there almost half a century earlier.

"Did I ever tell you that once I was a Queen?" Susan begins.  
Her grandchildren listen eagerly as Susan tells them a story of a Lion and a Wardrobe and a land called Narnia and the four siblings who ruled there during a Golden Age.  
"Is it true, Nana?" one asks, "Were you really a Queen?"

Susan merely gives them an enigmatic smile.  
"What do _you_ think?" she asks as they run back to their parents.  
"I'll be with you soon, Aslan be willing." Susan whispers to her siblings.

* * *

Susan is seventy-two when she dies in her sleep on a cold, rainy day in the house that was once Professor Digory Kirke's. She is buried in between her husband and her siblings, and her family sits beneath the apple tree by their graves. The little children play, acting out stories of Narnia and Aslan and the four Kings and Queens of Old.

"What are you doing?" Susan's oldest asks, "What game is this?"

"It's Nana Susan's story!" they cry.

"Oh? What story?" Susan's eldest son asks.

"The story of Narnia and Aslan and the Kings and Queen of Old!" they yell.  
"Nana Susan never told _us_ any stories of Narnia. Will you tell us them?" Susan's youngest son asks.

And the children tell them of Narnia and the Wardrobe and the Witch and the Lion and many of the adventures of the four Kings and Queens of Narnia of Old.  
"What imagination you all have!" their parents say when the children have finished the tales.

The children stop and look at their parents oddly.  
"But – it's true. Narnia was real. The Cat told us so." the youngest says, pointing to a Cat sitting in the trees branches, purring contentedly. The adults looked, but before they could even turn their heads, the Cat jumped out of the tree and ran off, before disappearing completely.

* * *

Susan thinks she is dreaming as she finds herself dressed as a queen, in a land that could be Narnia, were it not _more_ than Narnia ever was.

"Welcome back, Daughter of Eve" a voice purrs behind her.  
"Aslan!" Susan cries, as she rushes to hug His mane, long skirts swishing around her legs (_oh how she has missed that!_).  
"I told you that the way to My Country was through your world, did I not?" Aslan asked.  
"Yes, Aslan. You did. I am so sorry that I –" Susan babbled.  
"There is no need for that. Susan, you have indeed found your way to My Country. Come, daughter, for there are many who wish to see you."

And as Aslan led Susan through His Country, she passed many old, familiar faces. Fauns and Beavers and Dryads and Ravens and Princes, all waving happily to the Queen.  
Aslan leads her to her husband (dressed as finely as Peter and Edmund used to dress), who bows to Aslan, and places a crown upon her head.

"I missed you, darling." he whispered into her ear, mingling his fingers between hers.  
They walk hand in hand as Aslan leads them toward a valley where a group of seven young men and women are gathered around in a circle, all of them wearing fine clothing in a style similar to that which was worn during Narnia's Golden Age. Three of their number wear crowns upon their heads, and Susan cannot help but gasp at the sight of them.  
They look up in surprise, a radiant smile pulling across their faces at the sight of Susan.

"Susan!" they cry, as they race toward the Gentle Queen.

* * *

And somewhere in England, a child recites a tale told to her by her grandmother.  
"Once upon a time there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy…"

* * *

And in Aslan's Country, the four Kings and Queens of Narnia of Old rejoice as they are reunited with Queen Susan the Gentle at last.


End file.
